The Desperate Hours

Film noir was particularly useful for puncturing the suburban tranquility of 1950’s America. In William Wyler’s The Desperate Hours, Humphrey Bogart plays prison escapee Glenn Griffin, who, along with partners Hal (Dewey Martin) and Simon (Robert Middleton), breaks in to a suburban Indiana home and takes the Hilliard family hostage. Loosely based on a true story and one in a series of home invasion noirs during the 1950’s, this was Bogart’s penultimate film, and his poor health is evident on screen; it’s quite possible he was already suffering from the esophageal cancer that would soon claim his life. With almost no musical score and a bland, suburban setting, Wyler deftly and mercifully alternates scenes of captivity with various characters taking (sometimes illogical) excursions outside the home: one involves a deadly carjacking, another character is crushed by a truck. Wyler and cinematographer Garmes often default back to a camera set-up in the floor of the front hall, casting a wide, two-story eye from below as if the devil is keeping tabs on the household from hell. It’s not a masterpiece but a bittersweet near-farewell for Bogart.